AT&T* and Acuo Technologies®, a leading provider of comprehensive software solutions to the medical imaging industry for archiving, collaboration and migration services, announced a strategic alliance to develop vendor-neutral, cloud-based medical imaging storage solutions for healthcare providers and suppliers. Acuo is the latest technology ally to join the AT&T ForHealth(SM) portfolio of mHealth, cloud-based, and telehealth products and solutions.

Hospitals and providers are facing the risk of capacity shortage to securely store and share patient medical images and information. Many of the disparate, proprietary vendor systems in place today that manage and store images will only become more taxed as the population ages and imaging volumes and sizes increase. According to Frost & Sullivan, the number of medical imaging procedures is projected to reach the 1 billion mark next year.

IDC Health Insight’s U.S. Health Industry Provider 2011 Top 10 Predictions report foresees the use of cloud storage for medical image archive data as providers begin to implement vendor-neutral archives. Balanced against this explosive growth is the need to share medical images outside the hospital’s systems with referring physicians and other facilities.

Under the new agreement, AT&T plans to utilize Acuo Technologies Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Services Grid™, combined with AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service(SM), to create a cloud-based offering for storing, accessing and sharing medical images. The solution will feature a vendor-neutral platform that supports disparate picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) on an as-needed, pay-as-you-go model, avoiding costly capital investment in storage infrastructure.

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